5 Alternative Android Photo Gallery Apps

New phones are typically more powerful than the ones they’re replacing. They have zippier processors and higher-resolution displays. Yet rarely are we ever 100% satisfied with our phones. For everything a manufacturer gets right, there’s often another thing we feel they get wrong. It’s hard to please everyone, especially when it comes to matters of personal preference. If the default Android photo gallery app on your phone just doesn’t organize pictures the way you wish it would, here are five alternatives that may arrange those priceless images precisely how you want them.

1. Gallery ICS

Gallery ICS brings the gallery app introduced with Android 4.0 to phones that are still running older versions of the operating system. For those who are still using Gingerbread, this is one way to get access to some of the improvements featured in the more recent version of the gallery. Yet even if you already have a device running 4.x, that doesn’t mean you have access to the gallery app as Google envisioned it. If you don’t like all the changes introduced by your device’s manufacturer, swap out your default gallery for this one.

2. Customizable Gallery 3D

In contrast to the previous app, Customizable Gallery 3D is based on the stock version of the gallery found on Android devices running 2.x. If you’ve made the jump to Android 4.x but miss the old photo gallery, this is one way to get it back. It’s a modified version, though, and it comes complete with many additional features. Users can modify the number of rows shown on screen and the quality of the images. There’s also the option to hide photos, a feature not present in the original version.

3. QuickPic

QuickPic has been around a while, and it’s good at what it does. It presents photos in an easy to navigate grid interface that scales very nicely across both phone and tablet displays. Alternatively, users can explore their photos using a list view. There are more extensive options, such as the ability to hide photos from view and password protect them to keep out snoopers. Users can also play both animated GIFs and videos. Not only is this app free of cost, it’s free of ads as well.

4. Photo Gallery (Fish Bowl)

Fish Bowl comes with what is perhaps the most adorable icon. On top of that, it has a distinctive theme. That’s not to suggest that it’s short on features – it has its own file browser, a locker for hiding images, and the ability to compare images side by side. If you want an experience that doesn’t look like it was produced by Google, this is worth a download.

5. F-Stop Media Gallery

At this point, all of the apps are starting to sound the same. F-Stop Media Gallery is another alternative complete with a grid-based interface and a private media vault for storing content you don’t want others to see. Perhaps a more defining feature is its support for tags, a method of organization that some photographers swear by. F-Stop pitches itself as both a fast and powerful photo organizer, and it’s optimized for both phones and tablets.

Conclusion

Photo galleries can be a difficult thing to get right. Sometimes they feel too cluttered, or they just does not have the features we desire. As long as alternatives are out there, and they’re easy to install, this isn’t that big of a problem. Setting a new Android photo gallery app as default can make the old headaches a thing of the past. If you have an app that you personally prefer, share it with us below.

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5 comments

Nice and exact reviews for the 5 best photo gallery apps for android. I have tried them all and what bothers me on these apps (except F-Stop media gallery) is that when you place a single photo in several albums what happens is that the actual photo is copied several times, taking up much more memory than it should. This becomes a real memory problem when we have thousands of photos with tens of albums. The exception to this is F-Stop media gallery which is creating albums with pointers in the albums instead of copying the actual photos. In my opinion this is an important factor in deciding which app to use and cannot be ignored by users and most importantly cannot be ignored by reviewers! Thank you